Ode to the Timeshare 💦🏡⛱

Ok so I was talked …bullied…into purchasing a timeshare shortly after becoming single, while still in that euphoric tipsy turvy stage of just being excited to do things for the shear thrill of being able to do it yourself. And I know there is a stigma but I want to share how positive it has been in my family’s life. First, the background…

You know how it goes. You show up for the too good to be true 3 nights, 4 days resort vacation, commit to the one hour (projected, not actual!) talk, tour, brainwashing, hypnotism, heavy handed sales really…determined to resist…and boom….the sales guy (only person who still wears a suit these days and on a Saturday!) somehow gets out his numbers & calculations & guilt complex driving techniques, preying upon your not so stellar budgeting skills & before you know it you are the proud owner of a time share!

Now granted mine is not the traditional fixed deal where you have to spend the same week at the same location forever or plan your vacations on a five year basis…thank God!

It is a point based system with many in network resorts to choose from. So far my family has only visited the same one, about three hours away, in the heart of Disney.

Since then I have observed there are many organizations specializing in helping owners divest their time shares. At first I thought this was the secondary time share market. But, no, these companies actually want you to just surrender your time share, including any money you paid up front. Many, many scammers preying on the unwary.

Every time you go to your resort you will get pressured to buy more. I succumbed once. But no more. Now it is a game to me. I show up, set my timer for one hour, get what I want out of the salesperson (usually planning my next big vacation) and persist in politely declining all their can’t pass this up offers. But maybe many are not so stalwart and eventually end up over their heads. I cannot imagine someone who has paid thousands of dollars not being able to keep up with a few hundred in resort fees per year but maybe those people are out there.

The fact is, despite all the bad rap about time shares, I am so grateful I did this for my family.

It has carved out vacation time in our busy lives, time to be together away from our typical busy lives running here and there. Yes, the teens are still on their phones as much there as at home 😅but it is still good to get away from our usual and have a change of scenery.

I can’t say we do much. Some of our best memories I think have been just hanging out at the pool, or binging on Harry Potter movies or eating “gator bites,” probably just fish or chicken in disguise, but I’m rather cynical.

Sure on occasion we’ve visited one of the nearby parks but mostly we just chill inside the gated complex which has all we need.

As I said we’ve only ever been to our “local” resort but this coming summer we’ll be branching out, meeting my dad “halfway” between our southern location and his northern, exploring a new resort.

Our time share, bought not as part of a plan but on impulse, has enabled me as a single mom to give my family what many of my friends has growing up, a “cottage” where I come from, where families would go every weekend in summer and sometimes out of session. We can’t go every weekend but we go a few times a year. And as the kids get older it’s harder to find times we are all available to get away from work, school and other activities that hold us closer to home.

I’m revisiting this article I wrote a year ago while on spring break with 4 of my 5 kids because I am just so happy. I look back at some of the photos and realize how much they’ve grown over the last 3 1/2 years since I purchased my interest. They are almost all teenagers and the youngest at 11 believes she is. They don’t like to do much other than he on their phones but they still drop everything to come to Orange Lake with me. And I treasure it. 🤗💗

I grew up in northern Michigan and while my family did not own a cottage I spent summer weekends with my friends at theirs. It was my way of life. Owning this time share has allowed me to provide my kids with a similar experience, the familiarity and tradition of revisiting the same place year after year, growing up making new memories in the same place.

My teenage son has found a group of friends on the basketball court where he spends the evenings. (Over the summer he met his first “girlfriend” 😊.) My girls make friends too in the pools. I work some because according to them I’m a workaholic. 😅They play. I love my work and being able to do it while they play. We are together.

To me it is easy, to bring them on a 3 hour drive, to tell them to order what they want on the room charge. It is nothing finance wise. It is Everything to them, the memories they will have. This constancy in their life that maybe can make up a tiny bit for the chaos of divorce and shuffling between two very different households..🙏

I cherish the memories we’ve made and will continue to make at our special place.